MLB.com's Carrie Muskat has been covering Major League Baseball since 1981 and is the author of "Banks to Sandberg to Grace: Five Decades of Love and Frustration with the Cubs." You can follow her on Twitter @CarrieMuskat. Here, she blogs about the Cubs.

6/17 Sunday night baseball

* The Cubs did rally in the ninth, but came up short Sunday night in a 7-4 loss to the Red Sox.

“The thing that’s going on all year long is we get into close ballgames and something breaks down,” Dale Sveum said. “We can’t score if it’s close or we just can’t make a pitch when it’s close to hold them or shut them down to get the game into extra innings. We’ve got to be better at those things — somebody stepping up and getting a big hit when it counts, not when we’re four or five runs down.”

* Paul Maholm is 0-3 with a 5.59 ERA in his last seven starts. He gave up two runs in the first, and now has an 8.31 ERA in the first inning this season.

* Reed Johnson is batting .366 in his last 28 games dating to May 11.

* Now, the Cubs head eight miles south to U.S. Cellular Field to renew their intracity Interleague series against the White Sox.

“It’ll be loud and rowdy,” Johnson said. “That’s the atmosphere you want, especially now when you’re struggling as a team. You go into a place and know there will be a packed house and it makes it easier to concentrate than when you’re playing in an empty stadium. It’ll be a good series and I think we’re playing good baseball. It seems like we can’t do those little things to finish off a ballgame. We need to get better doing those things and those ballgames will start falling our way.”

– Carrie Muskat

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2 Comments

Allright Carrie, you are now the proven, fair handed writer I always thought you to be as you listed Reed Johnson’s stats since 5/11. WOW, .366 average! Awesome stats, he should be playing almost every day…and not only will he not embarrass himself in the field, he’s actually a very good defender.

Oh my ; was that theo the brain on ESPN with his keene sense of “Level’s” watching this Horse”#### Team ! Thank goodness they had the BB on in the Suite and U S Open golf. Theo go to the pressbox get on the rt level !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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